Cheeseburger in Paradise (Food Blog #1)

Japanese Word of the Day:

English: To eat
Japanese:  Taberu (たべる or 食べる)

It’s time! Let’s talk about food!

For the most part I've been doing a lot of cooking over the last month (wow, I've already been here a month!). Initially I started cooking because I wanted to learn some basic recipes before school started so I wouldn't be trying to learn to cook while busy and stressed. Over time I realized I’m a bit terrified of going to restaurants alone for fear of being asked or told things I wouldn't understand. That’ll probably change soon as I get lazier and learn more about restaurants in the area.

To begin with, I’m going to show you all some of the meals I've been cooking, starting with Japanese dishes and moving to a few Western ones. When applicable I’ll try to link you to the recipe or write one up so you can try Japanese food too! Or just cook a pizza without using an oven. Let’s start!

Gyudon

Om nom nom. I love this stuff.

Gyudon is one of my favorite Japanese foods. It’s also considered a fairly ‘manly’ food. Oh well. The basic idea of it is rice topped with very thin slices of beef and onion that have been cooked in a sauce of dashi, soy sauce, and mirin. It often has other toppings, such as egg, pickled ginger, or green onion. Because the beef is so thin it really absorbs the flavors of the sauce, especially the mirin. Mirin is one of my favorite Japanese ingredients because it sweetens things a bit and (I think) brings out the flavor in meats. Mirin is also slightly alcoholic and can be used as a substitute for sake/sugar in recipes; in the recipe I linked I use 6 tbsp of mirin instead of sugar or sake. I know it seems weird but I also highly recommend the pickled ginger (which is usually dyed pink) as a topping.

Recipe: https://en.cookpad.com/recipe/811331

Gyoza, Miso, and Rice

This meal always makes me feel fancy.

I like this meal because it 1) looks like a fancy spread of delicious food and 2) is super easy to make. For those curious, gyoza is known in the west as “potstickers”, though if they stick to your pot you may be doing something wrong. I buy my gyoza premade because I am lazy. So basically this meal just requires me to throw rice in my rice cooker, cook the gyoza on the stove, and make the miso. Miso soup is made by boiling water and adding dashi to make a dashi stock base. Dashi usually comes in granule form and can be found in America if you look around. If you skip the dashi stock and use water your miso just won’t taste quite right. After the stock is made, turn the heat down and add your miso paste. You never want to boil miso paste because it hurts the soup though google is giving me about 10 completely different reasons how it hurts the soup. Regardless, never boil once you added your miso paste. Before serving, add some thin green onion slices on top. Tada! A basic miso recipe. Most miso includes seaweed (called nori) and tofu but I like mine simple. If you ever add those things be sure to cook them before adding the miso paste!

Sometimes I also like to add another smaller side to this meal, like pepper strips cooked in a little katsu sauce.

Katsu Don

The sauce is katsu sauce, by the way.

First off, I did not make this. The fact that my favorite Japanese food is katsu is a curse for 2 reasons; 1) katsu is usually served with cabbage which I detest, and 2) I cannot cook katsu to save my life.

Truly, I lead a cursed life.

Fortunately, my local grocery store carries some premade meals, yaaay! And this lovely katsudon dish is one of them, double yaaay!

You may notice that katsudon has a similar name to gyudon. That’s because the gyu- in gyudon is telling you its beef on rice with a dashi sauce whereas katsudon is katsu on rice with dashi sauce. For those who don’t know, katsu is a breaded and fried cutlet of pork or chicken and is delicious. My katsudon was also served with pickled ginger and egg, which is common with all -don type dishes.

Curry Rice

There's a layer of rice under there, I promise.

Curry rice is exactly what it sounds like; curry served with or over rice. What you may not know is that Japanese curry is quite different from Indian curry. Just in case someone doesn't know, curry is a thick stew type food that uses curry powder as a base spice and usually has potatoes, onions, and other such vegetables cooked in it. Indian curry comes in many different flavors and styles that range quite wildly whereas Japanese curry seems to have one main style. It can be described as much more ‘bland’ than Indian curry and more like a hearty stew with a curry flavor base. Sorry if that’s not a very clear description but… it’s a little hard to describe! Honestly, I think you should just try it, whoever you are!

Japanese curry is quite easy to make. You need to get a box of curry flavoring (which are easily found in American grocery stores!) and your vegetables and meat. The curry flavoring comes in the form of a small brick that you add to your cooked vegetables and water and then you have curry! I’m not going to offer any recipes for this since I tend to use the one on the back of the box as a base. Just add vegetables you like and none you don’t like. Easy right? For anyone curious, my curry used potato, carrot, onion, and bean sprouts. I might suggest skipping the bean sprouts though.

Indian Curry and Naan

Just looking at this picture is making me hungry.

Confession time: I like Indian curry way more than Japanese curry.  Indian curry uses a lot more spices and herbs and tends to be a lot spicier. I got a craving for some good curry and naan recently and decided to take matters into my own hands. I combined a recipe for tandoori chicken with a base curry and made naan on the side. Since it was my first time trying this recipe I haven’t had a chance to perfect the recipe yet. I’ll still link it below but here are my suggestions; add more spices, double the yogurt, lessen the amount of chicken. For my first batch of leftovers I did all but lessening the chicken and it made it a lot better. The naan recipe I’m not going to link because unless I badly misread something the recipe is incorrect. I ended up with a very wet dough that I had to double the flour in before it became a proper dough and doing so messed up the proportions. So sorry, you’ll have to find your own naan! I have been told you can use the pizza dough recipe I’ll link later to make naan though.

Tandoori Chicken Recipe: https://en.cookpad.com/recipe/1217608Base Curry Recipe: https://en.cookpad.com/recipe/596418

Speaking of Pizza…

Best comfort food ever.

Time to move on to western foods! As some of you may have noticed, my kitchen does not contain an oven. As an enormous lover of pizza this presented me with quite a conundrum. So I asked the almighty Google to help and my pizza prayers were answered! Stove top pizza recipes, woo!

The basic idea of this recipe is to make the dough and let it rise while you prepare any toppings you want. When the dough has risen, spread it into a crust and cook it juuuust long enough to lightly brown the bottom. Then flip it over (with the stove turned off) and throw your toppings on. Turn the stove back on, let the bottom cook and cheese melt and you have a delicious pizza! I make these almost one a week because they’re so delicious and remind me of home, so don’t think it’s a huge hassle. I also like to have some tomatoes in balsamic vinegar on the side because I’m a southerner.

Stove Top Pizza Recipe: http://kurryleaves.blogspot.jp/2013/11/stove-top-pizza-no-oven-pizza.html

Veggie Pasta

Italian food makes me so happy.

Do you know what the worst thing about cooking in Japan is? There are no garlic presses and I haven’t found any white wine for cooking. In America I loved to cook pasta dishes but it’s a fair bit harder here in Japan without my favorite wines and stocks. I still manage but I’m lazy and just mix premade sauce with some veggies. I will never take a garlic press for granted again. If you’re wondering, the bread is my attempt at garlic toast with cheese. Sadly, the cheese here is expensive and not very good so I have to use what I can. It wasn't bad though.

Burger and Mashed Potatoes

Now that's an American meal.

Now this is what I call American food. The nearest fast food is a town over so I have to make due when I get cravings for something more red, white, and blue. Like with everything else, I cook my burgers on the stove after marinating them in mirin and garlic. I also haven’t found hamburger buns so I toast sliced bread and make it like a melt. 

Overall, with my western food dishes I have to do a lot of substituting to get the effect I want but it’s really nice to be able to cook Eastern food without trouble getting the ingredients. I’m really enjoying the chance to try out new recipes and methods of cooking.

I’ll do some food blogs from time to time each with a different topic. The next one will probably be snack type foods and drinks and later I want to do restaurant food (which will require me to actually go to restaurants). But that won’t be for a bit. Next time will be Elementary school summer matsuri (or festival)!

Post Note: I actually made myself so hungry writing this I had to stop and cook an early dinner. I suffer for you people!